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Kasey had told herself she’d be strong. That Jeanie would have wanted her to be. But the blackness inside her, the emptiness, kept pulling at her, threatening to overtake her. She kept her eyes to the front of the church, at the flowers covering the casket.
It wasn’t Jeanie. It wasn’t.
An arm came around her shoulders. Slater. When had she started to cry? He pulled her close, held her. She would have crawled inside him if she could. It would be safe there.
She knew he was leaving. He hadn’t told her, but she’d seen his bags in the back of his truck.
“Slater,” she whispered. “Take me with you.”
He stilled, but said nothing.
“Please don’t leave me, too,” she murmured. “I love you.”
She felt, more than heard, his sigh. He cradled her against him, ran his hand over her hair. She breathed in the scent of his aftershave, felt the strong, steady beat of his heart under her fingertips, and she knew she’d never love again...
“Kasey, are you listening to me? I want you to think about this, that’s all I’m asking.”
Blinking slowly, she stared at Slater, forcing herself to focus on his words. How young and foolish she’d been. Of course she’d loved again. She’d met Paul one year later, hadn’t she?
She stepped away from Slater’s touch, from the heat that had begun to swirl up her spine. “I appreciate your concern, but there’s nothing to think about.”
“Kasey—” He turned and threw his hands out with exasperation. “You can’t just marry some strange guy. Let’s talk about this. Whatever problems you might—”
“There’s nothing to talk about. I’m not marrying a strange guy. I’m not marrying anyone.”
He hesitated, then slowly turned back toward her. “You aren’t?”
“No. I never was.”
“You weren’t?”
She shook her head.
“But the ad, with your name and the Double D...”
Patience touched her smile. “I’m afraid my boys are the culprits. When we were in Dallas I placed an ad for a stud—as in stallion—for the mare I just bought. Cody and Troy decided to surprise me with an ad of their own.”
Kasey’s sons placed the ad? Slater suddenly found that he couldn’t speak. Perhaps it was due to the fact that his foot was in his mouth. He sank slowly into a chair at the kitchen table and simply stared at her.
She sat across from him, then flipped her hair off her shoulders and laughed hesitantly. “Somewhere they got the crazy idea that I, uh, could use a husband.”
Her cheeks flushed bright pink, emphasizing the deep green of her eyes. He felt like an idiot, talking to her as he had. Ten years might have made him older, but it sure as hell hadn’t made him any smarter.
“And here I thought I was saving you from doing something foolish,” he said, shaking his head. “Too bad there wasn’t someone to save me.”
“I’m glad there wasn’t,” she said quietly, holding her gaze steady with his. “Ten years is too long.”
The look in her eyes warmed him. It felt good, sitting in the kitchen with Kasey. He’d spent many an hour here, with the Donovans, at this very table, eating, talking, laughing.
He covered her hand with his and linked fingers. “I’m sorry about your folks, Kase. I was out of the country when it happened. By the time I found out and called, the number was disconnected. I didn’t know how to reach you.”
There was a high-pitched squeal from upstairs, a stomping of feet and the slam of a door. Kasey seemed oblivious to it.
“Paul and I never stayed in one place very long. The seven years we were married, I think we moved five times. He was easily bored.”
There was something in Kasey’s voice and the upward lift of her chin that had Slater’s jaw tightening and his protective defenses kicking into overdrive. He knew enough about pride to understand he couldn’t ask her about it. Not yet, anyway. “And the past two years?”
“The boys and I stayed in New York. I had a great job with an investment company that paid for schooling and offered flexible hours for working mothers. It gave me a chance to spend more time with my sons, take the classes I needed for my degree, and make a few good investments.” The ceiling fan over the kitchen table shook from a sudden pounding overhead. Kasey ignored it. “I’d had the ranch leased out, and once I had enough money saved, I came back here. I’m boarding a few horses right now, and as soon as I find the right stud for Miss Lucy, I’m going to start raising quarter horses. My boys are going to have the kind of life they deserve.”
Determination shone in her eyes. A fierce love for her children that summoned an unexpected stab of envy in his gut. Thank God there were mothers like Kasey to make up for the Paul Morgans and Jack Slaters in the world.
“Listen,” she whispered suddenly.
He did, but there was only quiet. Confused, he watched her straighten in her chair, her green eyes narrowing. She pulled her hand from his, and he couldn’t help but notice how smooth and soft her fingers were against his calloused palms. He started to say something, but she put one long, tapered finger to her lips. Lips that were wide and turned up at the corners, lips that could make a man forget himself.
Which was exactly what he was doing, dammit. He gave himself a mental kick and reined in his unwanted thoughts. “I don’t hear anything.”
“Exactly. And therein lies the problem. Prepare yourself, Slater.”
“Prepare myself for—”
They hit with all the vengeance of a tornado. Two screaming banshees blew into the kitchen, arms flailing and feet flying. Troy was in the lead, his shrieks a mixture of terror and laughter; Cody was on his brother’s heels, his red face blazing with anger, his hair wet and dripping with green goo.
“I’m gonna rip your liver out,” Cody wailed. Troy stuck out his tongue. Slater ducked as Cody flung a wad of the green slime at Troy. They circled the table twice, then darted out the back door.
Slater stared at the open back door. “Shouldn’t we be calling the paramedics?”
Kasey’s laugh was deeper than he’d remembered, richer. “You haven’t been around kids much, have you?”
Hardly. Jared Stone had a two-month-old baby, and Jake, Jared’s brother, had a one-month-old. At a family gathering only a few days ago, Savannah, Jake’s wife, had insisted that Slater hold both babies for a picture. Before he knew it, he’d been corralled onto the couch with a tiny baby girl in each arm. He’d faced guerrillas in South America and wild bulls in Texas that hadn’t terrified him half as much. “Can’t say that I have.”
“Well, Slater,” she said with a sigh, “you’re about to get an education. You might as well sit back and relax.”
The front door banged open.
“Stupid face!”
“Dog breath!”
“Wussy!”
“Dork!”
They blasted up the stairs in a salvo of insults. The air seemed to quiver in their wake.
Kasey frowned, then rose. The firm set of her mouth and the hard look in her eyes had Slater feeling sorry for the boys. It also had him glad he wasn’t the subject of whatever sentence was about to be laid down.
“I’ll make up the guest room after I ‘speak’ to my sons. You’re staying the night.”
He opened his mouth to decline, then shut it again when he saw the firm set of her mouth. He folded his hands in his lap and nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
She grinned, then stopped at the kitchen door and looked at him. “By the way, Slate, you might want to wash that green slime off the back of your head before it dries.”
Three
Slater rose early, even before the sun began to push its first rays across the horizon. He pulled on a navy T-shirt, worn jeans and boots, then quietly made his way down the stairs.
Dinner had been quite an experience last night, he remembered with a smile. A noisy one. Excited from their trip, Cody and Troy had talked at the same time, relating every detail of their vacation. Kasey continually reminded them of their manners, corrected their grammar and pushed the green beans. While they were clearing the table, both boys insisted they weren’t even a little tired and couldn’t they stay up and watch “Hannibal’s Heroes”? How else would they find out who had stolen Yuma Blackhawk’s telepathic crystal ring?
Kasey sent them upstairs for baths, but before the coffee had finished brewing, both boys were sprawled, half dressed, out cold on their beds. They obviously slept as hard as they played, Slater had thought as he’d stood at the bedroom door and watched Kasey kiss her sons good-night. His own mother had died before he’d even turned ten, but he remembered her whispered “sleep tight,” as she’d tuck him in every night, and the memory had brought a tightening in his chest.
He closed the back door behind him with a soft click, careful not to let the screen door slam. He knew that Kasey needed the sleep as much as her boys. They’d stayed up and talked until long after midnight, covering the highlights of each other’s life for the past ten years, but the long drive from Dallas had taken its toll on her and he’d sent her to bed mimicking the same parental tone she’d used on her sons. She’d gone under protest, and only after he’d promised to fill her in on every juicy detail of his life in the morning.
The air was crisp this morning, the inside of the barn pungent with the scent of horse and leather and alfalfa. He heard a soft whinny, then a rustling of hay as the animals stirred. So familiar, he thought. Every smell, every sound a reminder of another time, another place.
A place he’d sworn never to come back to.
With a sigh, he picked up a rake. The wood felt solid and smooth under his hand. He hadn’t mucked out a stall in ten years, but the rhythm came back easily to him. So did pitching hay, he found, after he’d cleaned six occupied stalls. Effortlessly, he swung the pitchfork into the bale, hooked a bite, then arched the flake over his shoulder into the stall of a pretty little chestnut mare. She munched daintily, then blew out a delicate snort of thanks.
“You’re welcome,” Slater mumbled, and stabbed the fork back into the bale. His next customer, an unusually fine-looking speckled gray, nodded his approval, then turned his attention to his breakfast.
Slater had been working in near darkness, but now the dawn light began to spill into the barn through the open doors. And, he noted with a frown, through the roof, as well.
Leaning against the pitchfork, Slater surveyed the interior of the barn. It was neat and clean, but in desperate need of repairs. Holes in the roof, missing doors on the three end stalls, rotting wood. Only the stalls that housed the horses had been rebuilt.
He’d noticed the inside of Kasey’s house had shown signs of wear also. The kitchen faucet had rattled and leaked, the screens in the spare bedroom and upstairs bathroom were torn, a window in the living room cracked and the front porch steps ready to cave in.
Maybe her kids weren’t so far off after all, Slater thought. Maybe she could use a husband.
He shook his head at the ridiculous idea and tossed a flake of hay to a sorrel gelding in the next stall. Of course Kasey didn’t need a husband. A leaky faucet and broken window hardly required matrimony.
“Hugh Slater, what exactly do you think you’re doing?”
Pitchfork in hand, he swung around. She stood at the barn’s entrance, hands on her denim-clad hips, frowning at him. He swiped at the sweat beaded on his brow, then stabbed the pitchfork into the mound of hay and rested his hands on top of the handle. “Good morning.”
She folded her arms, then tossed her head to shake back the auburn curls spilling over the shoulders of her slate blue blouse. “Don’t ‘good morning’ me, mister. You’re supposed to be in bed, not mucking out stalls and feeding horses.”
There was purpose in her stride as she marched toward him, and it was impossible not to notice the sway of her slender hips. Curves had definitely settled in all the right places on her. If the lady was looking for a husband, or anything else, there would no doubt be a long line of males eager to oblige.
“Man’s got to pay for his room and board somehow,” he said, holding tight when she covered his hands with hers and tried to tug the pitchfork away. “Besides, I wanted to see if I still had the touch.”
She smiled at him. “Slater, you always had the touch, don’t you know that?”
She’d said the words innocently enough, but an undercurrent moved between them, an unspoken hint of something that had his hands tightening on the pitchfork handle.
Her fingers were warm and smooth over his, her skin soft. Before he could stop the thought, he wondered if she was that soft all over.
A mare from the fourth stall whinnied loudly, complaining she hadn’t been fed. Slater nodded toward the distressed animal, thankful for the interruption, uneasy with his reaction to Kasey’s touch. “At least let me finish what I started. Then I promise I’ll sit on my butt and do nothing.”
And a nice butt it is, Kasey noted as he turned away, then had to swallow back a gasp at her unexpected thought. Something had just passed between them a moment ago, something that still had her a little shaken, yet a little exhilarated at the same time. What would have happened, she wondered, if they’d have let themselves explore the awareness that had sparked between them, if they’d leaned closer and crossed over the invisible line that had been drawn between them?
Chastising herself for such an outrageous thought, a thought that had no possible chance of becoming a reality, Kasey scooped up a bucket of oats and moved down the row of stalls, following behind Slater, watching him feed the horses as she had hundreds of times before at his father’s ranch.
He’d carefully avoided any discussion of his father last night. They’d talked about jobs they’d had, people they’d both known, who’d gotten married or moved, but if the conversation even came close to mentioning his father, then Slater immediately changed the subject.
It wasn’t easy to discuss what was happening in Granite Ridge and avoid the name of Jack Slater and the Bar S. The man and the ranch were icons in Granite Ridge and the surrounding counties. He was known as far north as Amarillo and as far south as San Antonio as one of the wealthiest and finest breeders of quarter horses. He was also known as an overbearing, hard businessman who demanded perfection. Which would have also described him as a father.
“So what do you think of my boarders?” She ran her hand over the chestnut mare’s velvety nose.
“Nice stock.” He tossed the last fleck of hay into the end stall. “Especially the gray and the chestnut you’re petting. They look young, but they’ve got strong cutting potential. The others are good for riding, except for that little sorrel on the end. She’s a tad high-strung, though nothing a little work and a few sweet words wouldn’t fix.”
He was right. But that didn’t surprise her. Ten years ago, Slater had been the best horseman around. He could make the most difficult bronc do wheelies, then beg to pull a plow. “I hope to have a full stable by the end of the year. With that income and Miss Lucy as a brood-mare, the Double D will be good as new in no time.”
“Ah, yes, Miss Lucy.” He stabbed the pitchfork into a bale of hay and grinned. “The blushing bride. When are you expecting her?”
“Tomorrow.” She tossed a handful of oats to the gray and glanced over her shoulder at Slater. “I wish you could see her.”
It was an unspoken invitation to stay. They both knew it. Slater’s dark gaze met hers and the awkward silence hovered between them.
“I have to get going, Kase,” he said finally.
Dammit, dammit, dammit. Why had she let herself get her hopes up, even for a second? She’d known from the moment she laid eyes on him that he’d had no intention of staying. Ten years may have passed, but nothing had really changed. Not his feelings for Granite Ridge and his father.
Not his feelings for her. She was still his kid sister’s best friend, nothing more.
She swung the bucket of oats to the next stall, forcing a lightness to her voice that contradicted the heaviness in her heart. “What about all those juicy tidbits of your life you promised?”
He gave her a cocky smile. “Yeah, well that should take all of about five minutes.”
She doubted that. There was a look in his eyes, something in the way he carried himself and the tone of his voice that told her there was much more than he’d ever let on. And last night, even though they’d talked half the night, she still knew nothing significant about the past ten years. Everything he’d told her had been superficial and decidedly vague.
“I’m going in to town to straighten things out at the newspaper.” She brushed her hands off on her jeans. “We could have breakfast at Callie’s. She still makes the best blueberry waffles in the county.”
“And the best corn muffins.” His expression was one of reverence, then he slowly shook his head. “It’s better this way, Kase.”
She couldn’t help the knot of anger tightening in her chest. Mission accomplished. There were no maidens to rescue, so it was “Hasta la vista, baby.”
“Will you say goodbye to the boys?”
“I wasn’t just going to drive off,” he said with a frown. “Are they up yet?”
As if on cue, they came charging into the barn, whooping like wild beasts wearing baseball caps and blue jeans. Cody had a glove and ball, Troy a baseball bat. “Hey, Slater,” Troy called, “wanna hit a few?”
“Slater has to leave now,” Kasey said, amazed that she was able to keep her voice even. “Come say goodbye and thank him for helping with your chores.”
Troy bumped into the back of Cody when he stopped suddenly. “Leaving. You mean, like really leaving, not coming back?” Cody asked.
Kasey started to answer, then thought better of it. He hadn’t made it easy for her ten years ago when he’d left, had he? Why should she make it easy for him now?
